Effective and timely development of infant motor skills is a crucial element in overall child development. As such, a variety of infant motor skill developmental apparatuses are readily available to assist children in the growth and development of such basic motor skills. In particular, infant walkers have long been utilized to promote stability and balance in assisting an infant child develop basic walking skills. In general, however, most such walkers possess inherent disadvantages that render their use problematic.
For instance, mobile walkers are disadvantageous, as they fail to confine a child to a safe and visible area, enabling the child/user to roam freely about the home and potentially expose him/herself to dangerous and/or unsafe conditions such as an open staircase leading to a lower level of the home, or a cabinet full of poisonous household cleaners and/or disinfecting solutions. Additionally, walker wheels possessing locking mechanisms are, in general, unsuccessful in preventing a child from freely roaming about the home, as the child usually possesses enough leg strength to counteract any tension/resistance delivered by the locked wheels. Furthermore, mobile walkers generally have a tendency to tip over if the child/user abruptly shifts his/her weight to one side of the walker or the other during movement of the walker, thus resulting in injury to the child's face, head, neck, spine and/or arms. Moreover, siblings within the vicinity of a moving walker are also subject to possible injury if struck thereby.
In addition to potential injury that a child/user may suffer, walls, baseboards and surrounding furniture are also subject to damage upon collision with the sides of a fast moving walker. Furthermore, hardwood floors and/or other hard-surface floorings tend to easily scuff, scratch, mark and/or dent as a result of the walker's hard plastic wheels frictionally rolling thereagainst, thus aging the floor far faster than anticipated.
Conventional infant walkers are further disadvantaged as they lack the optimal aesthetic appearance required to entice a child to utilize the walker. As such, a parent may often physically struggle with a resisting child when attempting to place the child within a walker, as the child is typically reluctant and/or unwilling to be placed within a seemingly uninviting confinement, thus hindering the parent from temporarily relieving him/herself of childcare duties.
Additionally, conventional infant walkers are equipped with wheels to assist in propelling the child/user across a surface. Such wheeled walkers, however, are disadvantageous, as they tend to overly assist a child in moving him/herself, preventing the child from fully utilizing his/her own leg muscles and thus, potentially protracting otherwise normal development of those leg muscles for independent, apparatus-free walking.
Therefore, it is readily apparent that there is a need for an infant walker that provides a safe, confined, stable and aesthetically pleasing mechanism for assisting and training a child in the effective development of his/her walking skills and associated motor coordination.